Tag Archives: air-brushing

As I approach the counter a mixture of dread and excitement are doing battle within me. The old favourites, chocolate covered and sugar-coated, are there. I place my coffee order and hear a voice saying, “No thank you.”

It takes a second for me to realise the voice was my own. Brilliant, another small victory. Like anyone trying to break damaging habits I am learning to take it a day, and as with now, a confrontation, at a time. As I am confronted with my old problem areas I prepare for those old feelings with my newer and stronger desire to improve on where I am now.

Not exactly mantras, just healthier mental processes, run through my mind, coupled with a realisation that these calorie-laden, body and soul damaging confections are not a “warm pair of arms to comfort me”, as I have often quoted as explanation in the past. They are cold comfort, temporary solace and a ball and chain around my ankle, never letting me fly, to become all I want to be.

I am not trying to say that losing weight is going to cure all ills in my life, but just dealing with an old issue such as this has already given me courage, and repaired my somewhat shaky confidence enough, to enable me to look at other things that need work.

Stuff, whatever your stuff is, is never an answer, but it is usually easy; at least easier than dealing with all that ails us, until it becomes the most pressing issue of all.

The inanimate lump of sugar, fat and flour lies on the shelf and, for this trip at least, I win.

Wasn’t it Oscar Wilde who waxed lyrical about “Youth being wasted on the young.” He sounds embittered whereas I feel sorry for young people; not just todays young’uns, but for the youth of every generation.

I know all stages of life have that double-edged sword aspect, but the angst and self-doubt of my teens, twenties and even thirties blinded me to the opportunities and energy that were within my grasp. Is that what nature does; she gives you the wisdom and self-awareness of middle age and saps your drive to maximise their benefits. We grow into ourselves just as our bodies start to creek and groan with the passing years.

Is it all just a see-saw of gains and losses? Yes, on all levels.

New technology gives us speed and ease of access in communication and yet so many more of us report feeling isolated. Air travel is common place for most and yet the flight is usually a fraction of the time it takes to get to the airport, get through security, and cope with the delays etc. Our houses have every labour-saving device our grandmothers could have hoped for and every gadget to prepare a healthy and nutritious diet, but we have less time for friends and family and, for most of us, eat less home prepared food than ever before.

So, are we ever any further on than of predecessors? No.

Until time travel is invented future generations will go through the same growing pains me, my parents and their parents did. The scenery and specifics may morph but they will remain centered around those insecurities that haunted us all.

But what about the upside of youth; the energy, strength and enthusiasm. They don’t know the limits, so why are we imposing ours on them?

I love that Dame Helen Mirren recognises the many aspects that add up to attractiveness, but I just find it a bit condescending and hypocritical.

She is still working the off-the-shoulder dresses and “sexy” look ( and well done her, regardless of and not despite her age), so I find her dismissal of this particular form of beauty rings a little hollow. I can almost hear the “Dahling” being purred after the statement.

You are still rocking it Dame Helen, so please, enjoy it and lay off the trite lamentations.

Walk down any street, any public place ( any private place come to that) and you clearly see that FAT is an everyone issue!

What is similar though is the contradictory and cynical way which both the issues of “Fat” and “Feminism” are treated by the government and the media. They are such hypocrites. Magazines and TV programmes selling the next great way to lose weight are also laden with calorific-bomb recipes from the newest chefs, just as the government show “concern” at the ever-increasing girth of our children while allowing/supporting both food manufacturers and retailers to continue pumping menus aimed at children full of toxic and health damaging ingredients. I feel desperately sorry for the children of to-day. I believe the weight issues they will have as they get older will make mine look like a walk in the park.

Similarly women are still experiencing discrimination in the workplace (and others) whilst all the time being distracted with non-sensical demands which do nothing but help keep fellow women back from actual equality.

Fat, food and weight are a big problem for me; they have been for what seems like all my adult life.( me and a few squillion others). Oh yes, it’s dead simple, – eat less and move more. But just like our crappy food, we want all of this yesterday and with bells on! We want to lose weight ( and years) and snap back to what we looked like as teenagers ( you know, like the movie stars).

And what of equality? What is it each of us wants for the next generation?

I want a fair crack of the whip, regardless of whether you have tits or a dick. It’s just about who is best for the job. It’s that simple.

We all look for an “edge” at an interview, but seriously guys, if that edge comes down to your “six inches”( in your dreams! -….or maybe ours!!) then the world is still tits up! (pun intended)

Congratulations to Eddie Redmayne on his recent success at the Oscars, even more so when you look at the competition he was up against.

The amazing potential an award like this can bring to highlighting the plight of people suffering with not only Motor Neuron Disease, but other physically and emotionally crippling ailments, is huge. I wonder how many people had never even considered the life Prof. Stephen Hawking had before this illness wreaked its havoc on him. Do they look at him differently now?

Will they stop and think on the next time they talk over someone in a wheelchair like they are not there, or s p e a k v e r y s l o w l y in the company of an elderly person. Don’t think so.

One film cannot turn the tide all on its own, but it can shine a light on how much we all need to look beyond the outer packaging of our souls, at what actually counts in a person, and the movie industry shows us the flip side of that right now. In ” 50 Shades,” we have women, all over the world, ready to surrender all common sense and dignity, and why? Because Christian Grey is “gorgeous”, of course!

And this is all celebrated on an evening where every aspect of the actors/actresses appearance is scrutinised to the tiniest detail; where not a smidgen of fat or less-than-perfect skin is on show. Regardless of their acting abilities,if any of these lads or lasses couldn’t cut it on the red carpet they might be waiting a while on the next script dropping through the letter box.

I don’t believe Hollywood is about to change its beauty obsessed culture any time soon, but the rest of us need to wise up about it all. Real folk don’t come with air-brushing!

Front page of to-days “Daily Mail” is a close up of the back of a womans head, showing…….dah, dah, dah, dah… GREY HAIRS!

But, that isn’t news enough so, on page 7 they show Kate, the pregnant Duchess of Cambridge, in a full length picture and then re-print the shocking photograph of ( yes, it was HER head on the front page) her seemingly grey roots. Imagine. How dare she. For God’s sake leave the poor woman alone.

WHY? Really, why is this news? Especially as you have to go to the right hand column of page 10 to find a half-assed coverage of a child who died as a result of abuse, and how 18 opportunities to save this boy were missed.

Why don’t you go the whole hog of hypocrisy and misogyny “Daily Mail and David Wilkes” ( the author of this article), and have a centre spread discussing modern womans lack of self-esteem and the increase in plastic surgery?

I have continued to buy this paper long after friends and family fell out of love with its ethics. Well, I’m done!

So, first of all let me congratulate Cindy on having the nerve to let this image go to press. That has taken a lot of courage.
But I am going to be really awful here; why, when we now see she actually IS a beautiful, but normal, woman do we need to see her in this kind of pose?
It’s odd but I am at once grateful to her and yet still irritated by it.
Jamie Leigh Curtis did a similar, but I feel more honest, version of this some years ago, posing in very ordinary underwear and without the rest of the pizzazz of Cindy’s picture. She also did the shoot without make-up. Her beauty was not compromised in any way.
This image has done a lot to dispel the myth that some “special” people do not suffer the same issues as the rest of us mere mortals; but this is a highly intelligent and successful businesswoman, so why is there is still so much emphasis being placed on her sexuality?

I found this image on a blog by Rebecca Hains and was struck by how often we would all love the ability to air-brush our lives, let alone our bodies. Indeed some of us run into trouble when we try to!

The trouble is it all seems okay at first, with the minor adjustments, just like when actors and actresses start with the small, non-invasive treatments to smooth out the lines; the bits they don’t like. But then that usually leads on to the big stuff; the total overhauls and re-inventions and where do you stop?

It reminds me of how annoyed my mum got when my dad told her abruptly, after seeing a less than flattering photograph of herself, “The camera never lies!”

Well, we all know how untrue that is. And just as surely as we know the various actresses do not have 5ft long legs and 20″ waists, we know that few people ( I would say none at all) have “perfect” or “problem-free” lives, so what is all the pretence about? I don’t think we need to “confess all”, or spill our emotional baggage at the drop of a hat, but it must be an enormous strain to have to keep up this image of “Walton Family” type lives.

Drop the act and join the rest of us mere mortals; trying our best to do the “right thing”, even when we haven’t a clue what that is.